I have been developing an email list for my firm's new marketing piece. Working with Engineering News-Record's 2009 ranking of the Top 500 Design Firms, I have been looking at three sources to find appropriate contact(s) at each firm. One such source is the individual firm's website.
Once I locate a firm's site, I look for any listing of people -- specifically, the firm's day-to-day leadership. I'm not interested in their board of directors. What I'm looking for is their chief marketing officer, marketing director(s) and/or manager(s). In other words, the people who strategize, plan and manage the firm's marketing activities.
I have now looked at the websites of the top 155 firms on the ENR list. I am very surprised that a large percentage of these firms do not show a single marketing position on their lists of firm leaders. The lists included chief financial officers but no chief marketing officers, human resources directors but no marketing directors, IT managers but no marketing managers.
More surprising, a number of firms had a group with some variation on the name "strategic management committee," and this group often did not include a marketing leader either. I am flabbergasted!
Marketing staff focus on winning projects that the technical staff will bill time to next quarter, next year, and on into the future. How does a firm anticipate ongoing success if their marketing leaders don't have a seat at the table when it comes time to chart the firm's future and the course that will make that future achievable?
Maybe these firms just don't see that their marketing staff are professionals; they see marketing staff as "administrative baggage" who don't contribute to the bottom line because they don't generally have billable hours. Maybe they don't realize that, if not for marketing staff, there might not be enough projects to sustain a technical staff of the current size!
Marketers worry about the future while the technical folks concentrate on the work that's already on their desks. It should not be about billable hours -- if marketers don't help sell work, there will be fewer projects to bill, and firm growth will either slow or reverse. Marketers need to proclaim and defend their contribution to the firm's bottom line.
By the way, the new marketing piece is called The luxury of time. If anyone in interested, I'll be happy to share it with you. Just drop me an email at [email protected].